Quality-Based Explanations of Incumbency Effects

Eggers, Andrew C.

doi:10.1086/692667

Cited by 28 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…See, for example, Almendares and Le Bihan (), Ashworth (, ), Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita (, ), Banks and Sundaram (), Besley (), Besley and Burgess (), Besley and Prat (), Canes‐Wrone, Herron, and Shotts (), Coate (), Daley and Snowberg (), Eggers (), Fox and Jordan (), Fox and Stephenson (, ), Fox and Van Weelden (, ), Gehlbach (), Gordon, Huber, and Landa (), Lohmann (), Maskin and Tirole (), Myerson (), and Persson and Tabellini ().…”

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confidence: 99%

Learning about Voter Rationality

Ashworth

Mesquita

Friedenberg

2017

American J Political Sci

154

103

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An important empirical literature evaluates whether voters are rational by examining how electoral outcomes respond to events outside the control of politicians, such as natural disasters or economic shocks. The argument is that rational voters should not base electoral decisions on such events, so evidence that these events affect electoral outcomes is evidence of voter irrationality. We show that such events can affect electoral outcomes, even if voters are rational and have instrumental preferences. The reason is that these events change voters' opportunities to learn new information about incumbents. Thus, identifying voter (ir)rationality requires more than just identifying the impact of exogenous shocks on electoral fortunes. Our analysis highlights systematic ways in which electoral fortunes are expected to change in response to events outside incumbents' control. Such results can inform empirical work attempting to identify voter (ir)rationality. theoretical literature assumes voter rationality and claims to provide insight into a variety of political phenomena. 1 If actual voter behavior dramatically diverges from the assumptions in those models, then there is reason to be skeptical about that research agenda. An important empirical literature attempts to assess whether voters are indeed rational, examining the response of electoral outcomes to exogenous shocks outside the control of politicians. 2 The idea is that, with rational voters, these shocks should not affect incumbents' electoral fortunes. Although several studies find that incumbent electoral fortunes are unaffected by exogenous

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confidence: 99%

Learning about Voter Rationality

Ashworth

Mesquita

Friedenberg

2017

American J Political Sci

154

103

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“…This issue worsens whenever the empirical strategy does not properly parse out quality differences (i.e., φ > 0) either because researchers do not properly approximate the 50 − 50 threshold (seeHyytinen et al, 2017 for empirical evidence) or the electorate holds systematically different opinions of incumbents and challengers at the threshold(Eggers, 2017;Fowler, 2017).21 When candidates can campaign on common good or divisive issues, others have shown that higher degree of electoral competition can harm the electorate (e.g.,Lizzeri and Persico, 2005).…”

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confidence: 99%

Electoral Imbalances and Their Consequences

Prato

Wolton

2018

The Journal of Politics

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It is widely believed that competitive elections are required for good democratic performance. Many races, however, see little electoral competition, due to asymmetries in voters' evaluation of candidates' quality (due, for example, to incumbency) and party labels (due, for example, to ideology). We study the consequences of both types of imbalances in a unified theoretical framework building on the notion that voters are rationally ignorant and need to pay costly attention to learn about candidates. Our paper rationalizes key empirical regularities such as the existence of large incumbency spending and electoral advantages or the heterogeneous effect of incumbency. Further, we highlight that properly accounting for voter attention is critical to interpreting empirical estimates of key determinants of electoral success, the sources of the incumbency advantage, and the causal effect of incumbency status. We also show that while depressing electoral competition, imbalances nonetheless improve voter welfare.

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“…At a deeper level, the present work joins a few papers proposing a new link between theory and empirics. Rather than focusing on comparative statics (Ashworth and Bueno de Mesquita ), these studies (re)assess in various contexts what empirical estimates actually measure (e.g., Eggers for the incumbency effect; Wolton for special interest group influence). This approach, broadly defined, uses formal reasoning to rethink empirical counterfactuals .…”

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confidence: 99%

Are Biased Media Bad for Democracy?

Wolton

2019

American J Political Sci

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This article assesses the normative and positive claims regarding the consequences of biased media using a political agency framework that includes a strategic voter, polarized politicians, and news providers. My model predicts that voters are always better informed with unbiased than with biased outlets even when the latter have opposite ideological preferences. However, biased media may improve voter welfare. Contrary to several scholars' fears, partisan news providers are not always bad for democracy. My theoretical findings also have important implications for empirical analyses of the electoral consequences of changes in the media environment. The impact of left-wing and right-wing biased outlets depends on the partisan identity of officeholders. Empirical findings may, thus, not be comparable across studies or even over time within a study. Existing empirical works are unlikely to measure the consequences of biased media, as researchers never observe and can rarely approximate the adequate counterfactual: elections with unbiased news outlets.

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Quality-Based Explanations of Incumbency Effects

Cited by 28 publications

References 41 publications

Learning about Voter Rationality

Learning about Voter Rationality

Electoral Imbalances and Their Consequences

Are Biased Media Bad for Democracy?

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